Ship's Night
by StronglyLetteredWord
Summary: Episode tag for 2x09, "Project Daedalus." Spock visits Michael in sickbay. She doesn't know it.


A/N: This story follows episode 2x09 and features a quote from that episode (here be spoilers) as well as two quotes from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. You'll know them when you see them. Please be kind. I haven't written fanfiction in like ten years.

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The lights in sickbay have been dimmed for ship's night by the time the pneumatic doors swish open before him. Spock remains within the door frame as his eyes adjust; the muffled voices of the gamma shift medical personnel in an office somewhere in the recesses of the long room float toward him. Just beyond the stretch of his silhouette framed by the light behind him, Spock can see two occupied biobeds in the otherwise empty medical bay. He listens to the cadence of their breaths: one awake, one asleep. He steps forward, and the doors slide shut behind him as he approaches the bed to his right.

"Commander Nhan."

"Lieutenant."

"I trust Dr. Pollard has repaired your augmentation to your satisfaction?"

"Yes, she has. I can breathe easy, more or less." Less, Spock thinks, if the emotional toll of the away mission were taken into account, although he knows the commander to be among the more logical of his shipmates and capable of dealing with any psychological consequences of the regrettable outcome. "Doc's just keeping us for observation overnight," Nhan continues, and her eyes cut across the room to the other occupied biobed Spock has up to this point studiously ignored. "She put up a bit of a fight about staying once her broken bones were healed. Saru basically ordered the doc to sedate her if necessary so she'd rest. Stubborn. Must be a family trait."

Spock doesn't take the bait even if, on reflection, Nhan does have a point. He clasps his hands behind his back instead. "I am glad you'll make a full recovery. I will let you rest, as well."

He steps back as Nhan says, "Thanks for checking up on me, Spock," and finally turns toward the other biobed across from the security chief.

There is still a chair pulled up to Michael's bed, probably, Spock thinks, left there by Ensign Tilly or the aforementioned Commander Saru. In the short time Spock has known the first officer of _Discovery_, he's observed the close relationship the commander has with Michael. Much like the relationship Spock once had with her.

Spock sits in this chair and observes his foster sister for a moment. She is clearly sedated: her face is relaxed, almost serene, when in natural sleep she would still have a crease between her brows and be stirring fitfully after the trauma of watching a loved one die. Spock knows this about her from firsthand observation, and a twinge of regret rises in his throat at the way mere hours ago he'd so harshly reminded her of her inability to stop her parents' deaths. And then he'd been trapped on a starship, convinced he was about to watch live as she was murdered hundreds of kilometers away, unable to help, because she would rather die than kill a friend.

"_Michael, stop. It's her or you, Michael. Michael, open the airlock."_

Spock closes his eyes, centers himself, pushes down the mess of emotions, listens as Commander Nhan's breathing eventually evens out in sleep.

If Michael were awake, he doesn't know what he would say to her. He doesn't know if he'd even be welcome to sit beside her after the tremendous effort he'd spent on pushing her away when she'd insisted on rebuilding their crumbling relationship. He pretended she no longer knew him, told himself it was better to give in to anger when his whole world turned upside-down rather than accept her olive branch. But, he admits to himself now in the darkened sickbay with no one to witness his weakness, she knew him well enough to make sense of his senselessness, cared deeply enough to drag him to Talos IV, paid for his recovery with her own painful memory.

Spock has not moved when, at the top of the hour, a nurse emerges from the back office to check the patients' vitals. As she makes a record on her PADD, she glances at Spock. "The sedative will wear off soon, but she probably won't wake up 'til morning. You may want to go get some rest yourself."

If she's hinting at wanting him to leave, Spock pretends not to notice. He wishes, not for the first time, humans would just say what they mean. "I will stay. I do not require much rest as a Vulcan."

The nurse looks unconvinced but lets the issue drop. And truth be told, Spock isn't sure when the last time he rested actually is. Was he under sedation on the Section 31 ship? He'd been incoherent before that, unable to even meditate. It's no wonder he'd given in to such a display of emotion in Michael's quarters. His mind feels like it's beginning to fray at the edges. Again.

Not long after the nurse's retreat to the office, the telltale crease appears between Michael's brows. She turns onto her side and curls an arm around her ribs. The thought of her waking to find him there irks Spock. He's not ready to face the raw emotion a conversation with Michael would evoke. And yet he's not ready to leave her alone again with the phantoms of dead loved ones. He takes her hand and projects as much calm as he can muster.

Spock takes a deep breath and begins. "'Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"'"

Michael's features relax once more. Her fingers curl into his, but she doesn't stir otherwise. Spock continues to recite _Alice _from memory. Here now is the distraction from the red angel's chaos Michael had sought with a chess set. When up is down and down is up, logic doesn't always have the answer, but a little white rabbit might.

Spock has begun chapter four when the nurse returns for vitals some time later. He continues at a whisper without acknowledging her presence. "'"I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit-hole-and yet-and yet-it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life. I do wonder what _can _have happened to me. When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!"'" Spock trails off here, thinking of angels and visions from the future, of a human whose concept of time can scramble his own mind, of the loneliness he felt in that mind meld, the loneliness he has so often felt himself. And now exhaustion has rooted him to his chair. When the nurse does her rounds for the third time that night, she finds Spock pitched forward in his seat, head resting next to his sister's shoulder on the biobed, fingers laced with hers, fast asleep.

Hours later, in sickbay as well as all over _Discovery_, the lights begin to brighten gradually, simulating sunrise. Michael stirs and opens her eyes as doctors and nurses arrive for shift change. It seems to be a moment before she realizes where she is and why. When she sits up, she looks at the chair to her right, but if anyone was sitting there, they've since gone.


End file.
